Senior Photography Show: Amina Hassen
If You Listen Closely
Oberlin College, March 12-15, 2010
Free and open to the public

For the first time, community members from Northeast Ohio will have the an opportunity to peek look into the uninhabited spaces of foreclosed and abandoned homes through the photographs of Oberlin College student Amina Hassen. Hassen's work will be on display in Oberlin’s Fischer Gallery from March 12 to March 15.

Amina Hassen, originally from Maryland, is an Oberlin senior majoring in visual arts and comparative American studies. For her final show, she is presenting photographs taken in foreclosed and abandoned homes—spaces that, though no longer lived in, bear the residual presence of occupation. Using large-format camera, Hassen finds and enters vacant homes in the Cleveland and Oberlin area and photographs what she finds. By entering architectural spaces that she has no right to be in, her powerful images provide delicate glimpses into the homes of strangers, who have since moved on. Hassen’s work reveals, in her words, “feelings of presence in a space of emptiness.”

Hassen’s interest in domestic places began with work documenting her own home, but in the last year she has found inspiration in dwellings in which she does belong.

“I have transitioned ,” she said of her artistic approach, “from a rightful inhabitant to a voyeur and intruder, keeping the same attention to documenting what might otherwise go overlooked,” Hassen said.

Hassen’s work also touches upon in the historical significance of these houses, and explores the meaning of “rupture, divorce, foreclosure, and decay” within American society. The pieces not only illuminate the beauty of domestic spaces but chronicles an economic issue that continues to affect both the local and national community.

The show’s opening will be held at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 12 in the Fischer Gallery located on Oberlin’s campus. Directions can be found here. For further information about Amina Hassen’s work, please visit her website at http://ifyoulistenclosely.wordpress.com/.


Media Contact:

Katherine Gleysteen
Co-Marketing Project Coordinator
Phone: 781 696 1127
Email: katherine.gleysteen@oberlin.edu

Tazri Afrin
Co-Marketing Project Coordinator
Phone: 216 355 4103
Email: tazri.afrin@oberlin.edu